2023-10-18 02:45:00
La Polonaise brings to the screen, in an austere film with little dialogue, the gloomy existence of Mirka, a precarious old midwife.
Mirka is a little lady with piercing eyes and wispy blond hair bent over by a life of self-sacrifice. With the air of a heavy bird, half sparrow (her precarious air) half bird of prey (her austere air), wife and mother, midwife in financial difficulty, she decides one fine morning to rob an office neighbor, armed with the kitchen knife that she clumsily extracts from her handbag. The attendant, young and incredulous, not impressed, calls the cops. The little lady cowers. But the damage is done, even if she has done no harm. Her narrow existence, like the family secret she stubbornly guards (words are rare in A Woman on the Roof), is shaken to its foundations.
Anna Jadowska’s idea is to film this morose body. This proletarian body and its acting act. Except that by taking this unique pretext for its staging of hard flat areas, as if the obligatory step was to aestheticize harsh life, with a very crude glow, the film quickly becomes stiff, pale and monotonous. The only scene that made you want to see more than this monolith conscious of its graphics, shows Mirka practicing her profession as a midwife, including childbirth. Finally a little speech, a sovereign gesture and change of expression, forgetting to play the slouching harshness excellently. Making a vow of Nordic minimalism, A Woman on the Roof perhaps aimed to transplant Kaurismäki to Poland, less elevated and without humor, but we might as well revisit Dead Leaves.
A Woman on the Roof by Anna Jadowska, with Dorota Pomykala, Bogdan Koca… 1 h 35.
#woman #roof #Anna #Jadowska #gun #eyes #Libération